You can be antizionst, I honestly don't care for your personal opinion.
But when you speak out, a jewish person, against most of your jewish siblings, you are actively hurting us all.
You being publicly jewish and anti zionist, which is a term mostly used to sugar coat antisemitism (my grandma's polish passport taken after the holocaust because "anti Zionism" for example), is used by real antisemitic people in the same way republican use conservative black people, and sexits use conservative women.
Idk, just felt like telling you my opinion.
I really don't intend to hurt you or anything like that. If it comes off as super harsh, please forgive me.
Have a great day!
I'm not speaking out against anything Jewish. Zionism isn't Jewish, and you don't have to be Jewish to be a zionist any more than you have to be a zionist to be Jewish. If there are a number of zionist Jews, that's a problem of zionism, just as the fact that there are white people who are racist or sexist or otherwise bigoted doesn't make white folk the problem. Still you say I'm hurting us all, as the usamerican conservatives say that learning the truth of slavery and antiblackness during the pre- and post-Civil War eras hurts white students? I'm not the one making us look bad; look instead to Netanyahu or Ben-Gvir or Gallant, and judge yourself not for the actions of your kin but by your own actions alone.
Let's put aside the way those same conservatives use zionism to push the far-right ideologies of Likud, Otzma Yehudit, and similar groups into the mainstream of Jewish, Christian, and contemporary western culture. Let's just focus on the issue of antisemitism, on a small scale or on a larger scale. Let's focus on October 7th, or the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, or the Shoah, or all number of incidents prior or since. Why is October 7th seen as the start of an onslaught that has been ongoing since last century? Why do we as a broader culture know of the Tree of Life but not of the Cave of the Patriarchs? Why do we teach students about the Shoah but not the Nakba? Why do you think Jewish people are worth more than the millions of Palestinians that have been killed, maimed, sickened, starved, abducted, terrorized, or displaced by Israel for eight decades? Why should I consider the threat of another October 7th to be a reason to excuse to commit a cultural genocide or a murderous, exterminationist genocide of over two million people, by right of skin color and a landlord's dreams of real estate? Because one side is my people? You're all my people. Every life on this planet is one of my people, and if my own mother, sweet as she is, committed a sin so grievous I'd do anything I could to bring her to justice.
I'm sorry your grandma had issues of antisemitism. You and I have experienced it too, I assume, though likely not as a systemic issue. I personally lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when the congregation of Etz Chayyim-Or L'Simcha was attacked by a neonazi. I know all too well how antisemitism can spread, unprompted and unabashedly. If you want to put antisemitism to rest, turning "our people" into a country of genocide apologists is not the way to do it. To call antizionism a form of antisemitism is true antisemitism, because it's a way of preying upon the fears of a people that have already been through so much in recent memory. Israel will be judged for Israel's behavior. The dream of avoiding antisemitism is not worth another holocaust.
The Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestine, so soon after watching the post-9/11 descent of my entire country into islamophobia and war, is the single issue that radicalized me into politics as a teenager back in 2005/2006. If I can help others learn what I learned and see what I've seen, then I think it's worth some hard feelings.
Speaking of hard feelings, don't forget: After World War I and the Great Depression, the people of Germany thought the Third Reich had a reason to rule as they did. I speak out against zionism because one grave sin does not permit another. Don't give Likud an excuse to be the modern era's new Nazis.
